It’s a placid night in the Crystal Catacombs, this mystical terrarium kingdom of my pet
yellow crazy ants.
In just five months since the creation of these great lands, the ants living here have
settled in and ordained this place as their royal home.
But guys, if you think this looks awesome, wait until you see what these lands look like
as soon as the sun rises on this hypnotic rocky planet of caves and glowing crystals.
The Crystal Catacombs here transform into a world that will blow your mind!
I know you guys will love all the amazing things I have to show you.
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Enjoy!
The sun rises on the Crystal Catacombs, and the ants of the Golden Empire are awakening
to go about their various tasks of the day.
It had just rained in the lands prior to sunrise, and the ants were enjoying the newly moistened
soils.
Springtails scurried across the rocky surface and suddenly...
A worker comes by, to recruit other ants to help it with something!
“Guys, we need some help Northwest of the nest!
Come by if you’re free!”
Select ants rushed in to assist.
Can you guess what this big news is Northwast of the nest?
Leave your guesses in the comments and let’s see if you’re right.
I’ll give you a clue, though.
It’s not a cockroach.
I’ve been feeding this colony a surplus of chopped up roaches over the past year in
order to get their numbers up, and also help them rehabilitate from a plague of mites,
and I’m happy to announce, the colony has bounced back gloriously and are mite-free!
I estimate the colony has grown in numbers to about 500,000 to a million or so workers
now, with the bulk of them hanging out inside their nest inside the darkened caves, which
also makes it harder for me to count them.
But I’m trying to let them fast from roaches for a day or two so they feed cum gusto when
I do give them their next roach.
Now for those of you, AC Family, who’ve been following the Golden Empire from back
when I had them in an AC Hybrid Nest setup, as you saw there were many, many queens in
this colony.
They’re a polygynous species, which basically just means they allow multiple queens in a
single nest.
But I was grateful to know that somewhere in those caves, the queens were healthy, prolific,
laying lots of eggs, and adding to the colony’s numbers.
Now check this out, AC Family!
These ants loitering around the entrances to the nest are of course guarding the openings
to ensure no trespassers or predators attempt to infiltrate their domain.
Though these yellow crazy ants don’t sting, and can’t really harm an adult human, don’t
underestimate them!
Yellow crazy ants have been known to leave dogs blind with their formic acid sprays!
The Golden Empire has a very powerful acid defense response if they need it!
But a predator or trespasser is not the thing that lies Northwest of the nest that requires
assistance.
Let’s move on.
Now you may have been wondering about these little squirrel-like critters called springtails
roaming the lands.
These amazing creatures belonging to the subclass Collembola are soil friends to the ants.
The ants never quite bother the springtails, as both parties go about their various business,
and you better believe these springtails, which we on the channel have named the Spring
cleaners, indeed have very important business to tend to in the Crystal Catacombs.
As the name that we, the AC Family gave them, suggests, these Springtails are cleaners.
They’re essentially the janitors of the Crystal Catacombs, which is why the Golden
Empire appreciates having them around.
They eat leftover scraps from the insect parts the ants leave behind after meals, as well
as the potentially harmful molds that grow on the ants’ garbage.
They even keep the beds of moss pristine and clean of mold growth.
I find them to be very thorough at cleaning up!
Scientists have called them ‘springtails’ because of their ability to spring away if
needed, with the help of an appendage attached to their tails.
Here you can see springtails of various ages and sizes scuttling about.
It’s the adults in particular that can be quite territorial over food and space, though.
So feisty!
Taking on the important roles of scavengers, fungivores, and detritivores, the springtails
are essential to any soil ecosystem.
Aside from clean up, their poop goes on to nourish the plants and mosses of the lands,
and as you can see, even the hearty rockweed stalks appear to be benefitting from them
being around.
If you’re wondering how the springtails got here in the first place, they appeared
and established themselves from just a few originating members that must have come in
with the soils I used in the terrarium.
I find healthy populations of springtails like this, just seem to establish naturally
over time in a terrarium, as the soil community matures.
I personally love how cute, silvery, and fuzzy they look.
How about you, AC Family?
But, low and behold, it doesn’t seem like the springtails are quick to rush Northwest,
so you can bet a dead roach or garbage disposal is not the big thing the ants need some help
with.
Let’s finally move to the northwest of the tank!
Nearby, a crowd of ants were busy finishing off some sweet orange jelly.
Check out how fat that worker is.
Ants come here, fill up their social stomachs, then regurgitate their collections to other
ants to disseminate the food mouth to mouth to the rest of the colony, a process called
trophallaxis.
A couple of the ants stand guard, making sure no trespassers come by to steal their sweet
goodies.
But this jelly cup is also not what the ants need help with either.
In fact, the ants have been working on this jelly cup over the past two days now and are
pretty much done soon.
So, guys, are you ready to see the big thing located in the Northwest that the colony needs
some help with?
Well, AC Family, it’s this…
A new jelly cup!
Sorry, not a super exciting reveal, but it is exciting for the ants!
As we saw in an experiment we conducted last year, ants have preferences for different
flavours, and this strawberry flavour happens to be the Golden Empire’s favourite at the
moment.
A mass of workers came gathering around the jelly to gorge themselves on the sweet goods!
Ants were even eager to lick the sweet droplets that had fallen onto the rocks when I placed
the jelly cup in.
I could watch ants feeding on food they love for hours.
I find ant watching to be super relaxing and gratifying, how about you guys?
I find it’s kind of like watching a little society.
There’s always something new and exciting to discover every time I come to visit the
ant colony.
I truly hope you enjoyed this tour of the Crystal Catacombs, AC Family.
For those of you who are ant keepers or ant keeper wannabes, queen ants are now flying
like crazy in the Northern Hemisphere so be sure to look out for pregnant queen ants flying
now outside, to start your own ant colonies.
It’s actually not that hard to find a queen ant.
In fact, you can catch them in your own backyard, open window, or balcony!
In North America, a lot of you are tagging me on social media showing me photos of the
Camponotus queens you all are catching!
Congrats!
And guys, if you are keeping pet ants, be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your
ant keeping gear and easy-to-use ant farm starter kits that I use in my videos on this
channel, shipped to you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA.
Our ant farms help you get the most out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site, so visit
AntsCanada.com today.
Until the next time we return to the wondrous world of the Crystal Catacombs, the epic terrarium
home of our once again thriving Golden Empire, thank you for watching and supporting the
ants.
It’s ant love forever!
AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?
So much more is ahead for the ants of the Antiverse and Antopia so if you haven’t
yet, what are you waiting for?
SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified at every
upload.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to see extended
play footage of the Golden Empire enjoying their strawberry jelly cup.
It’s super gratifying to watch so go check it out!
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
What does ‘reticulated’ mean?
Congratulations to T Viana who answered:
Marked like a net.
Congratulations T Viana, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping Handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
Why are springtails called springtails?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free Ultimate Ant
Keeping Handbook from our shop!
Hope you could subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video, to help
us keep making more.
It’s ant love forever!